Olo Demonsbane
2020-10-13, 11:35 AM
I've been playing around with a few builds that use the Multivoice feat from Savage Species. Multivoice, in case you haven't recently read a feat that I'm pretty sure was intended for Ettin spellcasters, lets you cast an extra spell for each extra head you have as a full round action. For some reason, it has Two Weapon Fighting, Improved Two Weapon Fighting, and Multiattack as prereqs, but whatever. I've never seen this optimized, but I came up with a couple of Theurge builds that can do it nicely.
Multivoice and you (and you, and you, and you, and...)
"You're a theurge, you can't possibly run through your spells per day in a single encounter!" "Hold my 12 beers and watch this."
Strongheart Halfling Druid 5/Wizard 1/Mystic Theurge 2/Arcane Hierophant 10/Mystic Theurge +2
Feats: Forceful Spell/Extend Spell -> Fell Drain (@6) (1st), Hidden Talent (Psionic Minor Creation) (Halfling), Midnight Metamagic (Flaw), Psycarnum Infusion (Flaw), Sanctum Spell (3rd), Natural Spell (6th), Two Weapon Fighting (Martial Wizard1), Multiattack (9th), Frozen Wild Shape (12th), Twin Spell (15th), Multivoice (18th)
EL1:
It's hard to go wrong with a druid at low levels. What's more, your feats are actually useful at this point. You can gain Psionic Focus, and expend it to use Psycarnum Infusion plus Midnight Metamagic to apply a +1 metamagic to one of your spells. Unfortunately, you are limited to feats that do not require another metamagic feat as a prerequisite. I've listed two possible options. Forceful Spell is my personal favorite, which attaches a rider effect to any spell you use that deals damage, forcing a Fortitude save vs being knocked prone and stunned. Produce Flame gets a whole lot more useful with that added on, to say nothing of Thundercloud. However, it is Dragon content, so Extend Spell is being presented as an alternative. Extend Spell is particularly nice at really low levels, when the duration of your round/level spells may not last an entire combat. Regardless of which you choose, it will be retrained for Fell Drain at 6th level. Other than that, take advantage of being a druid at 1st level. Let your animal companion eat things better than the fighter can while you use a sling and wish for more spell slots.
EL6:
Branching out to wizard makes this seem a strange level, but the combination of natural spell, your essentia cap increasing to 2, retraining your metamagic feat to Fell Drain, and abrupt jaunt make this an excellent one nonetheless. Psycarnum Infusion'd Fell Drain means that one spell per battle will be dealing negative levels in addition to damage. Depending on the combat, that could either be a piddly acid splash or something like Flame Sands or Call Lightning. Swapping your familiar for abrupt jaunt is necessary for the 3-level gap in which you don't have enough wild shape uses to use it continously. Fortunately, and surprisingly to me, Arcane Hierophant doesn't require you to have a familiar, so you can enjoy that survivability boost. Two Weapon Fighting should seem a bit strange, and you definitely will never use it, but it is a prereq. If you are starting at a lower level, having this as Improved Initiative and retraining it later on is definitely not a bad plan.
EL9: Finally, you are into Arcane Hierophant! You get another Wild Shape usage (12 hours per day now!), and your animal companion starts improving again, particularly by becoming a Familiar Companion, which once again only requires you to dismiss a familiar if you have one, and grants the familiar abilities regardless. Multiattack is yet another prereq, but one that you could feasibly use. You only have 2nd level Wizard spells, but this is the point where you can pull out gems like Fleshraker Wild Shape + Fell Drain Venomfire + Fell Drain Produce Flame (held) + Wraithstrike, if you want to mix it up in melee.
EL15: Around this time, you should be making sure you have a set of Gloves of the Balanced Hands. You won't need it until 18th level, but it provides you with a prereq that you need before then. At this level, Twin Spell comes online, and given that your essentia capacity is now 4, you can apply it once per battle for free. That is certainly nice, but the real benefit comes from...
EL16: 8th level druid spells and 6th level wizard spells come online at this level. You are going to want to prepare, in those 6th level wizard slots, two Sanctum Mage's Lucubration. Each one, when cast, lets you bring back a 5th level (or lower) spell that you previously cast that day. Note that it doesn't specify these have to be wizard spells, so you can recover druid spells with them as well. Furthermore, you can apply your new Psycarnum Infusion'd Twin Spell to them, letting you get back two 5th level spells from each of them. However, what makes this incredible is that a Sanctum Mage's Lucubration, when cast outside of your Sanctum, is in fact a 5th level spell. So from here forward, after combat you can do:
1. PI-Twinned Sanctum Mage's Lucubration, recovering two spells.
2. Regain psionic focus.
3. PI-Twinned Sanctum Mage's Lucubration, recovering the previous Sanctum Mage's Lucubration and one other spell.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all of your spells are recovered.
How's that for spell endurance? It won't work for your highest-level spells, but if you prepare all 6th level spells as Sanctum Spells, that's an incredible longevity advantage you've gotten. This is just in time for...
EL18: Engage Multivoice. As a full round action, you can cast one additional spell for each additional head that you have. This is the level that Huge wild shape turns on, and Frozen Wild Shape gives you access to 12-headed Cryohydra form. 12 spells per round would be prohibitively spendthrift on most builds, but given that you can recover all of your 6th level or less spells after each combat, that shouldn't be a problem. To make matters worse, you've gotten 9th level druid spells and 7th level Wizard spells here, just incase you needed more insanity at this level.
EL20:Two more levels of Mystic Theurge gives you 8th level wizard spells, letting you finish off the build with casting as a 19th level druid and a 15th level wizard, with the ability to regenerate all of your 6th level and lower slots out of combat, and the ability to turn into a hydra and unleash a ridiculous number of spells.
Variants:
Bamboo Spirit Folk Druid 2/Wizard 1/Mystic Theurge 4/Arcane Hierophant 10/Mystic Theuge +3
This version uses Bamboo Spirit Folk, which gives you trackless step, letting you get a much nicer Theurge progression of Druid 2/Wizard 1 into Mystic Theurge. If I were playing this for real, I would almost certainly choose this version, but it does require that you get a Wild Shape Amulet in order to get Huge Wild Shape, and that you get access to a Metamagic Storm in order to get all of the feats that you need. Personally, I know that my DM is fairly permissive about letting me find things like that if I speak about it with him ahead of time, but I know that's not the case for every game. I also absolutely adore playing Theurges with a 2/1 entry, as that means that every single level you get access to a new level of spells on one of your lists.
Strongheart Halfling Totem Druid 3/Master of Many Forms 9//Psion 1/Wizard 2/Mystic Theurge 3/Arcane Hierophant 6
Feats: Fell Drain (1st), Alertness (Flaw), Endurance (Flaw), Midnight Metamagic (Halfling), Psycarnum Infusion (Psion1), Natural Spell (Totem Druid2), Two Weapon Fighting (Martial Wizard1), Sanctum Spell (3rd), Multiattack (6th), Frozen Wild Shape (9th), Twin Spell (Metamagic Storm), Multivoice (12th)
The actual build that inspired this one. It is gestalt, though, and specifically gestalt with prestige classes on both sides, which I know is not how it's typically played. It does come online at level 12 though, and the fact that you combine a new spell level at each character level with early entry master of many forms makes leveling up very nice.
If you wanted to go more by the probable spirit of the feat, and only have two heads, you could gestalt a Multi-headed Lumi with a Mystic Ranger, which gets you two of the prereq feats for free, along with immunity to death in general if you make it Lernaean Multi-headed.
Please let me know what you think, and if you have any other ideas to optimize this feat, I'd love to hear them!
Multivoice and you (and you, and you, and you, and...)
"You're a theurge, you can't possibly run through your spells per day in a single encounter!" "Hold my 12 beers and watch this."
Strongheart Halfling Druid 5/Wizard 1/Mystic Theurge 2/Arcane Hierophant 10/Mystic Theurge +2
Feats: Forceful Spell/Extend Spell -> Fell Drain (@6) (1st), Hidden Talent (Psionic Minor Creation) (Halfling), Midnight Metamagic (Flaw), Psycarnum Infusion (Flaw), Sanctum Spell (3rd), Natural Spell (6th), Two Weapon Fighting (Martial Wizard1), Multiattack (9th), Frozen Wild Shape (12th), Twin Spell (15th), Multivoice (18th)
EL1:
It's hard to go wrong with a druid at low levels. What's more, your feats are actually useful at this point. You can gain Psionic Focus, and expend it to use Psycarnum Infusion plus Midnight Metamagic to apply a +1 metamagic to one of your spells. Unfortunately, you are limited to feats that do not require another metamagic feat as a prerequisite. I've listed two possible options. Forceful Spell is my personal favorite, which attaches a rider effect to any spell you use that deals damage, forcing a Fortitude save vs being knocked prone and stunned. Produce Flame gets a whole lot more useful with that added on, to say nothing of Thundercloud. However, it is Dragon content, so Extend Spell is being presented as an alternative. Extend Spell is particularly nice at really low levels, when the duration of your round/level spells may not last an entire combat. Regardless of which you choose, it will be retrained for Fell Drain at 6th level. Other than that, take advantage of being a druid at 1st level. Let your animal companion eat things better than the fighter can while you use a sling and wish for more spell slots.
EL6:
Branching out to wizard makes this seem a strange level, but the combination of natural spell, your essentia cap increasing to 2, retraining your metamagic feat to Fell Drain, and abrupt jaunt make this an excellent one nonetheless. Psycarnum Infusion'd Fell Drain means that one spell per battle will be dealing negative levels in addition to damage. Depending on the combat, that could either be a piddly acid splash or something like Flame Sands or Call Lightning. Swapping your familiar for abrupt jaunt is necessary for the 3-level gap in which you don't have enough wild shape uses to use it continously. Fortunately, and surprisingly to me, Arcane Hierophant doesn't require you to have a familiar, so you can enjoy that survivability boost. Two Weapon Fighting should seem a bit strange, and you definitely will never use it, but it is a prereq. If you are starting at a lower level, having this as Improved Initiative and retraining it later on is definitely not a bad plan.
EL9: Finally, you are into Arcane Hierophant! You get another Wild Shape usage (12 hours per day now!), and your animal companion starts improving again, particularly by becoming a Familiar Companion, which once again only requires you to dismiss a familiar if you have one, and grants the familiar abilities regardless. Multiattack is yet another prereq, but one that you could feasibly use. You only have 2nd level Wizard spells, but this is the point where you can pull out gems like Fleshraker Wild Shape + Fell Drain Venomfire + Fell Drain Produce Flame (held) + Wraithstrike, if you want to mix it up in melee.
EL15: Around this time, you should be making sure you have a set of Gloves of the Balanced Hands. You won't need it until 18th level, but it provides you with a prereq that you need before then. At this level, Twin Spell comes online, and given that your essentia capacity is now 4, you can apply it once per battle for free. That is certainly nice, but the real benefit comes from...
EL16: 8th level druid spells and 6th level wizard spells come online at this level. You are going to want to prepare, in those 6th level wizard slots, two Sanctum Mage's Lucubration. Each one, when cast, lets you bring back a 5th level (or lower) spell that you previously cast that day. Note that it doesn't specify these have to be wizard spells, so you can recover druid spells with them as well. Furthermore, you can apply your new Psycarnum Infusion'd Twin Spell to them, letting you get back two 5th level spells from each of them. However, what makes this incredible is that a Sanctum Mage's Lucubration, when cast outside of your Sanctum, is in fact a 5th level spell. So from here forward, after combat you can do:
1. PI-Twinned Sanctum Mage's Lucubration, recovering two spells.
2. Regain psionic focus.
3. PI-Twinned Sanctum Mage's Lucubration, recovering the previous Sanctum Mage's Lucubration and one other spell.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all of your spells are recovered.
How's that for spell endurance? It won't work for your highest-level spells, but if you prepare all 6th level spells as Sanctum Spells, that's an incredible longevity advantage you've gotten. This is just in time for...
EL18: Engage Multivoice. As a full round action, you can cast one additional spell for each additional head that you have. This is the level that Huge wild shape turns on, and Frozen Wild Shape gives you access to 12-headed Cryohydra form. 12 spells per round would be prohibitively spendthrift on most builds, but given that you can recover all of your 6th level or less spells after each combat, that shouldn't be a problem. To make matters worse, you've gotten 9th level druid spells and 7th level Wizard spells here, just incase you needed more insanity at this level.
EL20:Two more levels of Mystic Theurge gives you 8th level wizard spells, letting you finish off the build with casting as a 19th level druid and a 15th level wizard, with the ability to regenerate all of your 6th level and lower slots out of combat, and the ability to turn into a hydra and unleash a ridiculous number of spells.
Variants:
Bamboo Spirit Folk Druid 2/Wizard 1/Mystic Theurge 4/Arcane Hierophant 10/Mystic Theuge +3
This version uses Bamboo Spirit Folk, which gives you trackless step, letting you get a much nicer Theurge progression of Druid 2/Wizard 1 into Mystic Theurge. If I were playing this for real, I would almost certainly choose this version, but it does require that you get a Wild Shape Amulet in order to get Huge Wild Shape, and that you get access to a Metamagic Storm in order to get all of the feats that you need. Personally, I know that my DM is fairly permissive about letting me find things like that if I speak about it with him ahead of time, but I know that's not the case for every game. I also absolutely adore playing Theurges with a 2/1 entry, as that means that every single level you get access to a new level of spells on one of your lists.
Strongheart Halfling Totem Druid 3/Master of Many Forms 9//Psion 1/Wizard 2/Mystic Theurge 3/Arcane Hierophant 6
Feats: Fell Drain (1st), Alertness (Flaw), Endurance (Flaw), Midnight Metamagic (Halfling), Psycarnum Infusion (Psion1), Natural Spell (Totem Druid2), Two Weapon Fighting (Martial Wizard1), Sanctum Spell (3rd), Multiattack (6th), Frozen Wild Shape (9th), Twin Spell (Metamagic Storm), Multivoice (12th)
The actual build that inspired this one. It is gestalt, though, and specifically gestalt with prestige classes on both sides, which I know is not how it's typically played. It does come online at level 12 though, and the fact that you combine a new spell level at each character level with early entry master of many forms makes leveling up very nice.
If you wanted to go more by the probable spirit of the feat, and only have two heads, you could gestalt a Multi-headed Lumi with a Mystic Ranger, which gets you two of the prereq feats for free, along with immunity to death in general if you make it Lernaean Multi-headed.
Please let me know what you think, and if you have any other ideas to optimize this feat, I'd love to hear them!